Description

In the Climate Observatories in Lesotho, we focused on understanding weather patterns and Indigenous weather forecasting methods. The local communities use these methods to forecast, but with climate changes, it becomes important to understand whether this knowledge is still relevant. We focused on different weather types and the indicators that could be used to forecast such weather. Each community member became in charge of recording their chosen weather indicators in a weather diary that they kept over the period of one month. This was done four times in total at different times of the year. After each period we came together to reflect on what was observed by the communities. ‘Scientific’ weather measures, such as rain meters, rulers to measure snow, and thermometers, were brought in, to understand whether the forecasts matched the actual weather, which we then used to reflect on what this means when forecasting or whether other methods to forecast are needed. We summarised our findings through a card game and we have defined action possibilities to base future collaborations on.